Disk Utility Icon

Using journaling to recover your information

If journaling is turned on for a disk, Mac OS X maintains a continuous record of changes to files on the disk. If your computer stops because of a power failure or some other issue, Mac OS X uses the journal to recover the hard disk to the last acceptable state before it stopped.

To turn journaling on:

  1. In Disk Utility, select the disk or volume in the list.
  2. Click Enable Journaling in the toolbar.

If you have Mac OS X version 10.4 installed on your computer and your hard disk is formatted Mac OS Extended, journaling is turned on.

If you upgrade from Mac OS X version 10.3 and your disk is formatted Mac OS Extended, journaling may be turned on.

If you upgrade to Mac OS X version 10.4 from a version of Mac OS X earlier than version 10.3, journaling is not turned on. It's recommended that you turn on journaling.

See also

formatting disks